


The Inescapable Us

by canistakahari



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Arguing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:37:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canistakahari/pseuds/canistakahari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim and Bones are exiled on an alien world, and Bones refuses to speak to Jim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Inescapable Us

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [st_respect](st-respect.livejournal.com).

“I’m not talking to you,” snaps McCoy, scrabbling to his feet and pointedly turning his back.   
  
“You  _have_  to talk to me,” protests Jim. Because he’s a dick, he wraps his fingers around the chain linking Jim’s right wrist to McCoy’s left and yanks McCoy back around to face him.   
  
He’s met with the special glare he’s privately come to think of as  _Jesus Christ it’s a lion, get in the car_! There’s raw and unadulterated rage and hurt and anxiety as only McCoy can express, a tangled mess of emotion that has Jim shrinking back hesitantly.   
  
“I,” repeats McCoy, shoving Jim bodily and sending him sprawling, “am  _not talking to you_.”   
  
The drama of the gesture is completely devastated as the momentum drags McCoy over and he slips, diving face-first into the mud.   
  
Jim knows he shouldn’t laugh. Really. But the situation is  _so ridiculous_  that it just bubbles out of him, wheezing giggles that he tries to rein in as McCoy stumbles up to his knees, spitting and cursing. Bones aims a look – pained and wounded – up at Jim that has the laughter dying right in his throat, and then turns his back again.   
  
“Bones,” tries Jim, stepping a little closer to ease the pull of the chain. This is like a buddy-cop movie gone horribly wrong.   
  
McCoy stiffens and puts another step between them, saying nothing.   
  
“Bones,” repeats Jim, a little bit of distress working into his voice.   
  
McCoy’s shoulders twitch, but he doesn’t turn.   
  
“We have to keep moving,” says Jim, exasperated, guilt and regret churning up inside him. He’s always been crap at this sort of thing. He knows he must be in the wrong here, that McCoy is really just scared out of his mind and, yeah, justifiably angry, but Jim didn’t have a  _choice_. Bones has to see that, has to understand that Jim didn’t get them into this mess because he felt like it. He must know that Jim tried to get him out of this.   
  
Not that any of that makes him feel better.   
  
He actually feels a whole lot like puking, which is one of those things that as an invalid he dreads because it feels terrible and disgusting and undignified, but is such a relief once it’s over that Jim always wonders why he didn’t just give in sooner.   
  
Aside from a sore wrist and a thick coating of rank mud, though, Jim actually feels pretty okay. The nausea he’s experiencing is kind of just figurative, the vomit metaphorical. Now he just wishes he knew how to encourage his body – his  _brain_  – to give it up and hurl, already.   
  
There’s a tug on his chafed wrist that’s gentler that Jim expects, and when he looks up, he sees McCoy aiming a look of concern at him. Jim’s heart does a flying leap, and then lands right back in his throat when the expression wipes off McCoy’s face like it was never there, thanks very much, and settles back into uncomfortably-familiar restrained fury.   
  
McCoy tugs the chain again, as warning, and starts to walk.   
  
Or  _stalk_ , more like. He wins Olympic gold at vengeful stomping.   
  
Jim hurries along behind him, at a carefully-calculated distance of not-close-enough-to-get-bitched-at-but-also-not-too-far-to-tear-off-a-wrist.   
  
Eventually, Jim assumes McCoy realizes this isn’t a pace either of them can sustain because he gradually slows to a much more reasonable walk, and thus begin the most miserable hours of Jim’s life.   
  
They walk, and walk some more, and the frustrating part is that Jim’s got Bones right there, less than three feet away from him, but it’s his back he’s looking at, his broad, strong, manly shoulders, and Jim just kind of wants to climb him like a tree. This is torture, being ignored; he can actually  _sense_  the waves of displeasure radiating from McCoy’s mud-splattered body.   
  
“I’m sorry,” Jim calls out, kicking a branch out of his way and watching it terrify some small creature as it bounces into the scrubby underbrush. He’s so busy not looking at Bones that he walks right into him. “Jesus! Warn a guy!”   
  
“Look where you’re going,” counters McCoy, steadying him by the upper arms before dropping his hands like Jim’s just come out of the oven and is scalding hot. He doesn’t take a step backward, though, and Jim regards that as a tiny, pathetic victory.   
  
“I wasn’t expecting you to stop,” says Jim, because he is the sort of person that  _never knows when to shut up_.   
  
As expected, McCoy’s face darkens, and his expressive eyebrows pinch down into an annoyed frown.   
  
“Are you going to push me down again?” asks Jim, dragging his fingers through his clumpy, sticky-brown hair. “Because if you are, I reserve the right to pull your pigtails.”   
  
McCoy’s mouth spasms like he’s trying very hard to either stop himself smiling or baring his teeth in a snarl. “Jim,” he says, an ominous edge to his voice. “Don’t.”   
  
“What?” demands Jim, completely fed up. “What, Bones, don’t do  _what_? All I did was say ‘I’m sorry’!”   
  
“For what?” roars McCoy, balling his hands into fists, his posture rigid. “You don’t even fucking know, do you?”   
  
“For dragging you into this with me,” Jim says, with a hint of uncertainty. “Getting in trouble, yet again. Throwing us headlong into a truly ridiculous situation.”   
  
“No,” says McCoy, shortly.   
  
“No?” echoes Jim. He’s at a loss, here, floundering. Usually he can read Bones better than this. Fuck.   
  
McCoy just shakes his head and, once again, turns his back.   
  


oOo

  
  
They sleep, awkwardly, on the floor of a small, cramped, but blissfully-dry cave. The planet is warm and humid, but that doesn’t keep Jim from shivering, curled up in a ball with the chain stretched out its full length between him and McCoy, who has his back pointedly to Jim. He falls into sleep only fitfully, teeth chattering as he struggles to get comfortable.   
  
He wakes up in the night, cold and miserable, curling up tighter before drifting off again, but the next time he jolts awake, there’s another body pressed up against his. Jim turns gratefully into the warmth, wrapping his arms around McCoy’s trembling form and scooting up closer.   
  
McCoy mumbles something and then buries his nose in Jim’s hair.   
  
In the morning, McCoy can’t meet his eyes.   
  


oOo

  
  
McCoy doesn’t say a word to Jim for over three hours.   
  
In the middle of hour four, Jim is in busy contemplation of where his life went wrong as well as debating whether he wants a cheeseburger or a stack of pancakes the size of his head when they get back to the ship, and for a minute, through the haze of sore muscles and exhaustion and hunger, he doesn’t immediately realize McCoy is speaking to him.   
  
“What,” he says, listlessly. McCoy stops. Jim stops. This time they don’t collide.   
  
“You were going to go alone,” says McCoy, and that’s when Jim sees the haunted, pained emotion in his eyes, the dread and disbelief and utter despair.   
  
“I was going to save you,” corrects Jim, softly.   
  
“It’s not saving me if I’ve got to make my way through this piece-of-shit universe alone, Jim,” sighs McCoy. He sinks down onto a patch of grass and Jim follows suit, sitting close. It feels like a canyon between them.   
  
“Bones –”   
  
“Jim,” interrupts McCoy, and after five years, Jim still loves the way McCoy drawls his name. McCoy clears his throat and turns his head away, looking out to some undefined point in the distance. “I’ve gotten used to the hero stunts. I know you ain’t doin’ it to be contrary or to get acknowledged for  _being_  a hero. You do it because you feel, deep in your soul, that it’s right – that your job is to save the little guy, to help wherever you can. I know you can’t stand to see people in pain, that you jump headlong into things before you’ve even truly realized what’s going on.”   
  
Jim just stares, eyes on McCoy’s face, his tired mouth and tired eyes and lank hair and dusty freckles.   
  
“But when it comes to me, Jim –”   
  
“Bones, you can’t expect me not to want to keep you safe,” cuts in Jim, incredulous. “ _You_ , of all people.”   
  
Unexpectedly, McCoy smiles, small and wry. “I know what you were trying to do, Jim.”   
  
“Then what’s with the 48-hour hissy fit?”   
  
“Don’t ever leave me, Jim,” says McCoy, simply. “Even if it’s to save me.”   
  
Every scrap of Jim’s love and desire for McCoy rears up, ready to protest, but he silences himself with severe effort, because refusing Bones right now would be the most hypocritical thing he could ever do. If McCoy had done the exact same thing Jim had tried to do, he would’ve been just as angry, just as hurt, just as desperate to not be left on his own to face a life potentially absent of McCoy’s presence.   
  
It takes Jim a moment to find his voice. “You’d rather be here, tied to me, with no food and no shelter, drinking water infested with god-knows-what, than safe and dry and waiting for the  _Enterprise_?”   
  
McCoy gives him a look, raises an eyebrow. “I  _am_  here, aren’t I?”   
  
“Because you told those idiots you’d pissed in their stupid sacred fountain as well!”   
  
“I wasn’t about to let them dump you here alone,” repeats McCoy, tightly. “And if you ever try to pull that shit again while I’m around, Jim, I’m stepping on your balls. I’m borrowing a pair of Uhura’s high heels and I’m  _treading on your scrotum_.”   
  
Jim’s mouth works, soundlessly, and then he cries, “Her feet are smaller than yours!”   
  
McCoy accomplishes a one-hundred-and-eighty degree eye-roll. “And to think, you command a crew of over six hundred poor souls. Why, I do despair.”   
  
“I’m sorry, Bones,” Jim says, his shoulders dropping, the weight of the last 24 hours finally feeling a little less than unbearable. “I’m sorry I made you worry about me, and I’m sorry I nearly left you there. I was just trying to keep the blame on me. It was such a stupid – I didn’t want to drag you further into another mess.”   
  
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Jim, I’m used to messes,” announces McCoy, lifting up his wrist and jiggling the chain. “I think I’d actually be a little disturbed if we suddenly stopped unintentionally insulting alien species or discovering planets populated by super-intelligent shades of blue. Look, just repeat after me – ‘I will not try to sacrifice myself to save Bones’.”   
  
“I can’t do that,” says Jim uncomfortably. “Much as I’d love to control the universe, I’m still working on being crowned emperor. But if I can help it, I won’t ever leave you.”   
  
McCoy huffs irritably. “I’d rather be able to keep an eye on you, is all. Don’t be a martyr, Jim.”   
  
“Sure,” grins Jim, raising both eyebrows. He shuffles closer to McCoy and bumps their shoulders together. McCoy leans his head against Jim, and the last of the tension between them drains away.   
  
“So,” says McCoy.   
  
“So,” echoes Jim.   
  
“You think Spock is gonna find us sometime this century? I love you, Jim,” says McCoy, and Jim can hear the smile in his once, “but I don’t want to  _die_  with you, especially on a planet that smells like old socks.”   
  
Jim gives McCoy a shove with his shoulder. “You forfeited your right to bitch the second you said ‘Excuse me, sir, but I accidentally urinated in the Fountain of Long Life too.’”   
  
“There was a sign, Jim,” drawls McCoy, flicking Jim’s nose.   
  
“There should’ve been two.”   
  
“There probably were!”   
  
“Whatever,” sniffs Jim. “None of that changes that fact that I was cold last night, and even though you were ostracizing me, you gave me cuddles.”   
  
“Shut up,” says McCoy, the tips of his ears turning pink. “It’s not too late for me to do unspeakable – painful – things to your genitals.”   
  
“I love it when you talk dirty, Bones,” purrs Jim.   
  
Just in case Jim hadn’t had enough of this planet’s abundance of mud, McCoy makes sure he gets another taste.


End file.
